I've always been fascinated with debate in the poetry/fiction blogosphere over whether the MFA is a "professional" degree.
The argument against, in brief: calling the MFA a professional degree suggests that only those who receive an MFA can claim status as "professional" poets/writers, and as the designation itself ("professional") is odious as applied to Art , it should be avoided; the MFA doesn't provide training for any specific vocation (cf. college educator), and only imperfectly for the avocation of writing (the altogether sensible "writing-cannot-be-taught" meme); the MFA degree on its own does not enable one to find employment in field of creative writing.
Often, MFA programs are contrasted with law schools (the juris doctorate [J.D.] supposedly being an acknowledged "professional"-type degree). As an attorney, I find contrasting MFAs and law schools odd because in fact the similarities between these educational institutions are legion.
Consider the three primary arguments against the notion of a "professional" MFA, above: as with MFAs, law schools don't really provide training for employment as an attorney (these days 90% or more of schools refuse to teach "black-letter law," the actual language of state/federal statutes), but instead inculcate students with the subject's philosophical underpinnings, in order that students may "think like attorneys" (i.e., approach their work from the "mindset" of a attorney, just as MFAs help students to think about their work and their Art from new perspectives); as with the MFA degree, a J.D. degree alone doesn't allow one to work as an attorney, as one must one first pass a strenuous multi-day bar exam and have sufficient background in one's chosen sub-specialization (as through internships/fellowships) to get hired in that sub-specialization; finally, as is the case with graduates of creative writing programs who or may not choose, ultimately, to write/publish much in their field, most attorneys don't consider those with "merely" a J.D. to be an attorney, unless and until they've taken the additional steps to prove their competence and interest in the field--namely, by being admitted to a state/federal bar and being hired to practice.
Does this debate matter? Maybe, if one of the primary memes surrounding the MFA is that it doesn't carry with it the benefits of a professional degree, even as MFA graduates (paradoxically) get lambasted for "buying into" the professionalization of Art.
I'm not entirely sure what I think of all this, by the way. But I know this much: for those who want to teach creative writing at the college level, the MFA is undoubtedly a "professional" degree because you can't teach without it, even if (as with a J.D.) an MFA is not in itself sufficient to get a job, and additional displays of talent and skill and motivation are necessary. Also, given the somewhat universal disapproval most poets/writers (including those who are anti-MFA) exhibit toward novices who don't take their craft seriously, there must be at least some value to the cultural notion that Art, as much as the law or medicine or engineering, is amenable to some sort acknowledged "basic" mastery. I think we'd all agree getting an MFA is one (of many) ways to exhibit one's dedication and determination vis-à-vis Art, the question is whether the degree ought to be only a private or, alternatively, a public benchmark.
I'm wondering how others feel. Should the MFA be relegated to "non-professional" degree status, if doing so risks assigning to creative writing programs at least some degree of frivolousness? If the MFA doesn't, in fact, provide one (among much else) with some preparation for teaching creative writing to others, doesn't that necessarily mean one can't "learn" anything about creative writing at an MFA? Is it possible to consider oneself a "professional" writer without receiving the sort of scorn and disapprobation other "professionals"--attorneys, doctors, engineers, physicists--so rarely receive, being adherents to fields of study already "accepted" as "professions"? Does the rise of this notional job of "creative writing professor," especially within the past 20 years, make the idea of the MFA as a "professional" degree, and MFA graduates as "professionals," somewhat more plausible and less instinctively grotesque? Is it true what they say, that the MFA is nothing more than a "writing vacation"? Feel free to weigh in.
Friday, July 13, 2007
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17 comments:
seth... this isn't meant to be flip, but why do you care? or rather, why should we, as writers who want to go or are heading to MFAs, care? i guess i'm just not familiar with this debate, or have totally ignored it.
in my opinion, an MFA is absolutely NOT a professional degree and i wouldn't be interested if it was. a professional degree's academic activity prepares the student for the work they plan to do. an MFA's academic activity IS the work.
i'm interested in an MFA to learn a craft. it is primarily an artistic endeavor, not professional. i'd be upset if i got to an MFA program and all my classes were about marketing my work or teaching writing or writing specifically to exploit an audience (like, how to write a james patterson novel or something). i want to go to learn how to write better!
i'd like to get some experience teaching, but an MFA isn't a "learn how to teach" degree. the fact that you can't teach without it, doesn't necessarily mean that the degree prepares you to teach (some programs have no teaching). to me, there's nothing "professional" about it.
Noah,
No, you've hit the nail on the head: should we care, and if so, why?
The reason I ask these questions is because in my "travels" on-line I've come across two categories of people (on this issue, I mean): those who say, "Who cares about these issues?" and those who seem constantly distraught about the fundamental question of why they want an MFA in the first instance. I ask this question here because this site probably gets a decent bit of traffic from that latter demographic.
For instance, when folks get rejected from 8 MFAs and accepted to 1, but the financial aid offer is bad, I've run into many people on-line who, finding themselves in that situation or the equivalent, start asking themselves (and others), "What do I want out of all this?" Those folks debate whether MFAs are worth any student loan debt at all, whether it's wiser to go to a recognized "professional" school (as, often, their family would prefer), or take the financial risks inherent in having a degree which requires publication (in addition to being degreed) for employment. Many poets (I can speak, in this regard, only about that ephemeral "community") regard going to an MFA as a betrayal of artistic principles or artistic "purity," and I frankly think it's affecting whether some aspiring poets apply to MFAs or not--that is, it's become a growing cultural rift among certain poets. Maybe novelists don't have these issues? I don't know, I may be coming from a somewhat esoteric and/or highly-specialized perspective on this.
By your definition of a professional degree, I can definitely say that despite being an attorney I don't have one. My class in tax law certainly didn't prepare me for trying a first-degree murder case, and while law school offers opportunities (if you seize them) to gain a few skills which might be relevant to your future employment, most MFAs offer similar opportunities (most of which probably wouldn't interest me; on the other hand, working for a student literary journal to get editing experience is really no different from doing a clinical program in a law school). Conversely, if we can agree that writing is hard work, and that an MFA program can help us to focus our talents on getting a better result from all that hard work, couldn't we say that MFAs do prepare graduates for future work?
Maybe the word "work" is the problem; I'm not sure "work" has to carry a pecuniary connotation, though certainly publishing in many "professional" literary venues carries with it a modest pecuniary component, and those who publish a great deal and have an MFA often can/do find a full-time home in academia.
In any event, I really appreciate your response and it's certainly a fair one. I tend to think of "preparing myself for work" not as having anything to do with marketing my work--I don't ever want to take a class in that...!--but rather assisting me in being the best poet I can be, and giving me enough of a handle on foundational principles of writing that I could potentially teach others those principles (and, of course, how to subvert them intelligently). I think you might be wrong to mingle "marketing" and "teaching writing" as though they were two sides of the same "professional" coin. One strikes me as crass (in an academic setting at least), whereas the other strikes me as symptomatic of having a good grip on first principles of craft.
Anyway, interesting and well-considered response!
S.
thanks for responding, seth. you're posts are always insightful and i appreciate the time you take to respond so thoughtfully (and somewhat lawyerly).
you poets! i guess the whole argument has passed me by because i spend so little time in that "community" (and, i hate to admit, read woefully little poetry). i'm always amazed at the amount of art vs. profession argument that poetry-study prompts (vs. fiction), but i guess i shouldn't be.
i find the attitude that an MFA might be "a betrayal of artistic principles or artistic 'purity'" an ugly thought. what's so wrong about paying a really good writer to help you become better? although, i realize this comes from the minor corruption, or rather, the back-patting (and back-biting) nature of a small community that's hard to break into... the "PoBiz," as i've heard it called.
anyway, the label of "professional" aside (relabeling the MFA a "professional degree" isn't going to get anyone a job, is it?), the real heart of your questions is "What do I want out of all this?" now that's a totally fair question to freak out over. hell, any aspiring artist has to ponder if paying money to study their art is worth it. or, for that matter, if creating art is worth the potential sacrifice at all.
Seth brings up an interesting point comparing law schools and MFA programs. Some law schools teach abstract theory, while others focus on the practice of law. Ironically, students looking for high-paying law jobs may end up attending a school that focuses on theory. On the flip side, my roommate, currently attending Hastings, is interested in the academic side of law, but the school is focused on preparing its students for the practice of law and passing the bar. (So I’ve heard).
Regarding the MFA degree, some programs can be very writing-intensive, while others can be heavy on teaching and/or literature courses, or have some balance, depending on what the programs’ views are on how to train/teach/produce academic experts. I imagine that some entering students might be like, “I wish to take a course in English Satire” and the MFA program might say, “No you have to take all writing classes” and at other schools a student might say, “I want to spend 100% of my time writing” and the school will say, “No, you have to teach a course every year”. Also the expectations of students wanting to write novels and get published may change in 20-50 years. There is an interesting discussion on Stanford iTunes on the changing landscape of publishing (download is free).
So just as each law school decides how much coursework should be devoted to teaching theory and practice, MFA programs decide individually how much coursework to spend on “producing” art and studying art. The only thing that I would add to Seth’s post would be to expand the question “Does this debate matter” into “What are the expectations of students? What are the goals of MFA programs? And in 20-50 years how will all of this change?
Maybe in 50 years, MFA programs will be referred to as “Art Schools” in the same manner that we speak of law schools.
Noah,
I think you're right: the word "professional" was being used, I guess, only as a "fetish" (in the non-sexual sense) for me to focus my questions about "What do we want out of all this?" upon. Though certainly, in the poetry "community" at least, there is also that notion of "professionalization" as representing an act of artistic sedition.
S.
Great post.
I am also interested in the angst over whether an MFA is a 'professional' or 'artistic' degree. To me, one of the main problems with the debate is a general confusion over what professional means.
I think many people may equate professional with business - as in the business of getting a job, marketing your work, making money etc. And from the standpoint of this definition, professional seems uncomfortable when applied to something 'artistic' such as writing, especially when the economic outcomes of a degree in writing are so uncertain (though this economic uncertainty is true of many other degrees, as Seth has pointed out, so it is not unique to an MFA. An MBA is as professional as it gets, yet even this degree is viewed rather ambiguously by many in the business community).
When I consider the MFA a professional degree it is because I see it as a step toward making writing my profession (be it writing, teaching writing, studying writing). Since that profession is an artistic endeavor, it makes sense that a bulk of my studies will be artistic in nature.
But too often I feel 'artistic' is used in contrast with 'professional' in the same way ‘whimsical’ is used as a contrast to ‘serious’. Because people believe writing to be something that does not really warrant serious study. Kind-of like finger-painting or playing in a sandbox.
I don't need an MFA to write (like you don't need an MBA to become a CEO or a BA in Journalism to become a Journalist), but I find it somewhat degrading to the writing process to suggest it is not worthy of dedicating years of study to learn.
Which isn’t to say everyone should get an MFA, because the list of amazing writers who never got one is long and the list of people with MFAs that never published a thing is even longer.
But for me, it is a worthy time investment into my artistic/professional future.
On a real technical level, there are 2 kinds of post baccalaureate degrees--transitory (MA) or terminal (PhD, MD, JD, MDiv, MFA, MBA--amongst others). The MFA is terminal because it's the highest degree in its specific field. Back in the day, there were 2 professions--medicine, ministry and law, and somewhere along the line the name professional degree (which is accurate historically in referring to the MDiv, JD or MD) got conflated with the name terminal degree.
I have an MDiv, which only tangentially prepared me for ministry, but since the degree was necessary but not sufficient toward ministry, I guess it counts as a professional degree.
I sometimes thought the MFA program was a little like all those programs offering to help people lose weight or stop smoking—they were feeding on people’s fantasies. There are always some young people who want to be famous poets and are willing to pay for a program that promises to help.
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Well, I find that most people who are in/want to be in MFA programs simply want, in practical terms, a bit of concentrated time to write under the tutelage of experienced authors and in the company of capable peer "novices."
If you're going to be working on becoming a better writer, why not do it in the company of others like you, in an environment dedicated more or less wholly to the pursuit of writing? That this effort leads to a degree and to teaching credentials is a nice bonus, in my view.
I wonder how painters view the MFA. Has Dana Schutz (hot new darling of the art world, trained at Columbia) agonized over whether her degree makes her a professional artist or is merely decorative? Does she plan to teach once she becomes part of the established old guard of the art world? I wonder, too, how the less successful of her MFA classmates might see this issue. Do they regret the time/effort/money they spent? I would bet that there are as many, among the less-successful of her peers, that would not trade their time training as artists for the world as there are that wish they had gone to law school instead.
What I'm trying to say is that I believe each person who's considering the MFA has to answer for herself the question of just what the MFA means. Public debate over this topic has always struck me as superfluous for that reason.
l.,
I think there's a way to test that theory. If, tomorrow, our culture suddenly welcomed a new addition to its menu of educational options--say, a School of Sex (granting a degree in Sex, and training students in every method known for same)--would we find it unreasonable for prospective students to gather and decide whether to apply to such a program, and to publicly air theories on why it might or might not be beneficial to go? I'm not trying to be prurient here; I think the point is, the reason prospective attorneys don't have to publicly agonize over whether to go to law school is that the pros and cons of doing so have so thoroughly permeated our culture that one can hold a fairly thorough "internal" debate on the subject while, say, sitting on the toilet. No blog or internet bulletin board needed.
MFAs are different. They're a new idea, and what's more, an institutional idea, in a field traditionally hostile to institutions and not (frankly) always welcoming to new ideas, either. The MFA "phenomenon" is about twenty years old (in terms of its mass popularization), and even as I use that word "popularization" it doesn't seem apt--the only two books on MFAs were written in the last three years, and neither was published by a major publisher; no major magazine ranks MFAs any longer; data on MFAs (e.g., acceptance rates) is almost impossible to find; the experience of an MFA does not lend itself to easy quantification (e.g., you may want to judge prospective schools by the quality of their student body, but there's absolutely no possible measure which allows you to do that!); and so on.
I think failing to see the big picture here--that the place of the MFA in our culture is still being defined, and that as such a lot of souls out there are looking for a discourse to join on the subject--does (inadvertantly) a disservice to prospective MFA students, many of whom are extremely young (straight from college) and many of whom have virtually no family or community support in making a decision so clearly against their pecuniary interests. And that's another reason attorneys and doctors don't have to wrack their brains too much about the decision to attend law/medical school: there's money in it, and our culture always supports decisions with a dollar sign attached to the end of them.
Having gone to law school, I can tell you that had public discussions about the benefits and drawbacks of attending been more available at the time I applied, I'm sure many folks in my law school class would have made a different decision. Cultural inertia is dangerous. MFA applicants are lucky that the jury is still out on MFAs, which makes necessary discussions like this one both possible and, in my view, fruitful.
Best,
Seth
I'm glad to have found this blog. I've been in a bit of a funk over this whole "is an MFA in Creative Writing worth it?" question. I am a young professional, fairly successful in (yet utterly unhappy with) his occupation. I am also a writer currently working on my second novel (my first is still unpublished). And hence the dilemma (as has already been stated by those above me) comes down to:
does it make sense for me to quit my job, go further into debt (my loans from my previous degree have yet to be cleared) over the next two years by embarking on a process which makes no guarantees of success (getting published) in a vocation where success itself is subject to so many variables?
I think what it really boils down to is not whether an MFA is worth doing. It is whether it is worth making writing ones profession and the sole focus of ones life. Should I be a writer or should I be someone who also writes?
I'm beginning to think that doing an MFA (if that is what one truly believes would benefit them for all the reasons stated by those who have posted above me, ie surrounding yourself with able peers, apprenticing with masters of the craft and so on) is definitely a step in the right direction. Is it necessary? Not in the way it is necessary for an aspiring physician to get an MD. But if one is passionate about their writing, then an MFA is a sign of dedication to the process of becoming a writer. Its a step towards making writing the center of your universe, who you are and what you do. Its so easy to live a life where you "also write" (though theres nothing wrong with that if thats what you want).
The professional world measures success only in terms of tangibles - the dollar value. Yet as artists is it not our intrinsic nature that allows/encourages us to measure success in terms of the INtangibles as well? And therefore, if we were to revisit the question of whether the MFA guarantees success I would be inclined to change my answer - YES. As artists our primary measure of success is our ability to develop our art. Money and fame are the secondary and tertiary measures (though not necessarily in that order). It all depends on ones perspective as they enter the program.
I am reminded of Cavafy's poem Ithakas as I write this comment. It strikes me as relevant to the journey a writer must make through his/her life.
The bottomline is this: the MFA won't make you a best selling writer but it will make you a better one. Is that worth 40G's? Thats a question each writer must answer for themselves.
Hey Seth,
Having obviously entered into this bit of public discourse, I feel I have to add that my comments above were meant more as a way of reframing the issue than as discouragement for public debate here.
Debate-worthy or not, only the individual is going to be able to define what the MFA is for. I would challenge you to consider whether the MFA degree can signify one thing for an individual at the beginning of a career, then something different (or evolved) later on. I.o.w.: an MFA can be both the wrong and the right choice, depending on perspective.
It's not a bad thing to ask questions, but I would cringe at any debate that purported to try to "define" just what the writing MFA is good for. The jury's still out on everything, in my opinion. Seth. Look at electronic media. Look at race relations. Look at physics... Ahem... Sorry, I'm getting a little OT.
I don't think we have to decide. I think that if we want to be "professionals"--in whatever sense of that word--we can. And if we want to be artists we should give that a go. There are no guarantees, not even for lawyers, since the lawyer that's pulling in $100K today may be struck by a bus tomorrow. Right?
I don't mean to be too evasive. Again, I think it's useful to ask questions. I just find that pat answers are in short supply. Deciding to go ahead with my MFA plans was an exercise in calculated risk-taking and fuzzy logic for me. It's worked so far, but who knows if it'll work for others.
For me, the more interesting question in all this is whether MFA programs, in institutionalizing writing even further, hurt the quality of our literary output. I'd be willing to bet--if these things could only be established as facts by a super-objective observer--that our literary output is no worse or better, on average, than it ever has been or will be; that there are a million hacks for every genius, just as there always have been; that this genius sells while that one goes to his grave without being published; that some genius is overhyped and some underrated; and that, as a writer infinitely more succinct than I am once said, remarks are not writing.
Here's the thing about an MFA: if you're not a team player, you're wasting your time. It's a terminal degree with which you can teach all levels of schooling. It's also a full-time mental/social commitment in which you need to read other writers while they grow, while you yourself are pushing and drafting and sticking to a few advisers. Taking a third and fourth year can be a good choice if you're able to, financially. You should plan to write 1300-1600 words a day, and read a well written novel, plus a bunch of theory every week. When I say read I don't mean Nora Roberts-like reading. I mean you are searching for an author's craft diligence, style, voice and weakness. I've recently realized that Dickens is too sentimental with violence, J.M. Coetzee can have plot drop problems, and Ann Beattie likes to begin her short stories with similar words.
Wait, what's wrong with sentimentalizing violence?
:-)
seriously though.
he's one of my favorites for minor characters and even Pip and all that, but when it comes to violence his hand's like a baseball bat to a pillow. maybe i'm just in awe too much to recognize GENIOUS!
Tobias Wolff once told me that the sole benefit of the workshop setting, and the various "professional" programs which have grown up around it, is to "give a writer more time."
Though a score of criticisms as to the inductive flaws in this posting's (as a piece of artwork admittedly quite attractive) initial argument might be voiced, and though the fundamental differences between the agriculture and the nobility (in their respective manifestations as final formal defenses) might be explored as evidence of those flaws, perhaps nothing further on this topic needs to be said.
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